It’s time for another impeachment. There are some things the American system of government just can’t stand. President Donald Trump is now doing one of them.
Impeachment is not a remedy we should take lightly. Even though we have, of late, thought of it as appropriate whenever a president breaks the law, that is not really what impeachment should be about. Maybe President Bill Clinton broke a law on perjury. That’s bad, but it’s not what impeachment is for. Trump very likely broke the law when he spirited off state secrets and stored them in his Mar-a-Lago bathroom. That’s also bad, but it is not the stuff that impeachment is made of.
Impeachment is for those rare times when a president breaks the system. Trump did it once, when he tried to steal the 2020 election. He is doing it again by defying court orders.
The specific case where this is most obvious is that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. He was an immigrant from El Salvador who arrived in the country in 2011. In 2019 a federal judge listened to real evidence and determined that, were he to be returned to his home country, he faced a realistic threat of torture or death. That order allows him to legally live and work in the United States. There is no evidence that he has ever done anything in this country other than ordinary human stuff: go to work, raise his children, etc. There is no record of any violation of the law.
Nobody has challenged that judge’s ruling; it still stands. No federal agency has gone back to court and presented evidence that Abrego Garcia did not face a threat of torture or death in his home country. Neither has anyone presented any evidence of the Trump administration’s latest theory — that Abrego Garcia is a gang member. When a court offered the administration an opportunity to present its evidence, it could not come up with any.
In spite of his being in this country legally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement snatched him up and sent him to a prison in El Salvador. No hearing, no chance to say that ICE was mistaken. It just took him. The federal government has now acknowledged that this was a mistake, an “administrative error.†A federal judge has ordered that the United States government get him released and returned to the United States.
This is where things get weird. Any decent person who has made a mistake would apologize and try to fix it. Any decent government would do the same thing. Instead, the Trump administration has both defied the court order and abandoned any pretense of human decency by refusing to do anything to see that Abrego Garcia is returned to his home.
The Trump administration’s excuse is that because Abrego Garcia is already in El Salvador it has no power to have him returned. This is unadulterated nonsense.
Trump is the guy who says he could have stopped the invasion of Ukraine with some sort of Jedi mind trick. He says he could have prevented the war in Gaza. He claims the power to take Greenland and the Panama Canal, by force if necessary. He can’t get one guy released from a prison in El Salvador?
So why is this worthy of impeachment? Trump has done other things that were illegal and the cause of great human suffering. His destruction of the United States Agency for International Development was illegal and will result in mass starvation. It’s evil and should result in some consequences, either at the ballot box or in whatever ethical system Trump follows. It is certainly not something Trump should bring up when he is standing at the pearly gates, arguing for admission. But it is not worthy of impeachment.
Refusing to honor a court order in Abrego Garcia’s case is grounds for impeachment because it breaks the system. The American system of government depends upon certain things being true. The person who gets the most votes gets to be president. Court orders mean something. Courts get to say what the law is and the rest of us are supposed to do what they say. What happens to people happens because that is what the law requires, not what the whim of one person dictates.
Trump tried to break the system after the 2020 election. President Joe Biden won; Trump knew that Biden won. His response was to egg on a mob to storm the Capitol and intimidate Congress into returning Trump to the presidency. His response was to try to twist the arms of state officials into “finding†the votes to make him president.
That attempt to break the system failed. Biden became president; Trump became a serious candidate for the title of sorest loser is history.
Now he is trying again. He is saying that the law doesn’t matter, courts don’t matter, and that whatever happens depends upon his whim, not what the law and a court ruling say.
Some things in the system we will just have to tolerate. He can tank the world economy and make enemies of Canada and Mexico when all we really wanted him to do was bring down the price of eggs. Our system allows us to make mistakes in who we elect and allows those we elect to do foolish and counterproductive things. If we want to fix those things we have to do it at the ballot box.
We can’t tolerate ignoring court orders. Our system requires that the law mean something. When a president chops away at this pillar of our American system of government, it is impeachment time.
Maybe impeachment would not go anywhere. All Trump needs to avoid conviction is the support of 34 spineless Republican senators who will sit still and allow him to destroy the rule of law in this country, replacing it with the rule of Trump. Trade war or no trade war, spineless senators are a commodity that is never in short supply.
We have to do something. If only what Trump says — not the law, not court orders — matters then our system of government is finished.
